Shwa

Well it looks like someone has already gone that route and blew up 3 government ministers. So tell me, did the actions of this bomber "ensure peace" is Somalia yet or are there more ministers and government officials to die yet before "peace" can be achieved?

Really? That is your bottom line? Let's get rid of symphonies and art galleries while we are at it. Sports have been around as long as anything else in all human cultures from every corner of the planet. Sports, athletic games and play is just as every bit important as "education" and greatly contribute to life long physical and emotional health, the economy and social order. For many athletes, the PAN-AM Games are a stage where they can put all those years of hard work in minor sports to a test of competition against their counterparts from other regions of the Americas as a prelude to Olympic competition and beyond. Hopefully the staging of the PAN-AM Games will inspire more youngsters to become involved in athletic sports and games and avoid the sorry state of lard-ass-ism that compels people to sit in front of a computer and bitch on the Internet.

Yes, but. Who do advertisers advertise to? Who buys the products that are advertised or that the big corporations produce? So I think backing wealth at the expense of 'the people' or, in cynical times, the electorate is counterintuitive to business for both media and goverment. That is, the National Post or Globe or Star do not have a monopoly so they must compete for readership (or viewership in modern times). This means that social issues are relevant and that includes labour issues and such. Most relevant print media emply an editorial board who decide what is relevant and some, like the Star, also have a 'community' editorial board comprised of volunteer representatives from the community. Now I would agree that the anti-white bias is a myth, but is it possible that there is a pro-multiculturalism bias in mass media in Canada? (I know some might conclude that pro-multiculturalism = anti-white, but that simply is not true. It is faulty reasoning.)

And I agree. I think that since most major news sources are some from one level or another of government, there is a bias there that is not counterintuitive toward the business model of mass media as it stands in North America. There are marked differences between the US and Canada though, but in the end it comes down to the bottom line for everyone I think.

While I agree that humans don't thrive purely on logic, I disagree that any thing that exists in the Universe is exempt from scientific examination including "needs and emotions." Let's not confuse scientific inquiry with scientific explanation. Anything observable is fair game for science, however science may not be able to satisfactorily explain all phenomena observed. Interestingly enough, need and emotion play a very big part in scientific enquiry, as does intuition. And emotions, are they not simply a neurochemical recipe being fired off as an automatic response to a stimulus? A little dopamine, a pinch of norepinephrine and a dash of phenylethylamine and hey! it's love...

and then: So are you supplying this story to show that someone agrees with you about option #3? Or are you using the story to illustrate a point of some sort - that other governments might be interested in option #3, but they are not on the same side.

Eating tiger penis (or any other penis!) has a severe side effect and will result in a case of the willies.

If you do follow, then I have a question for you: up to and including the hypothesis and potential testing avenues, does my brief internet-forum scientific query follow the rules of the scientific method? 1. Observe some aspect of the universe. 2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis that is consistent with what has been observed. 3. Use the hypothesis, a working assumption, to make predictions. 4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations, then modify and improve the hypothesis in light of these results. 5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation If I haven't followed the scientific method, let me know which area is lacking. If I have, however, there are implications. One implication is that any cultural artefact can be the subject for scientific enquiry to one degree or another and this includes cultural texts, stories, myths, etc., including the Bible which is nothing more than a compendium of stories and myths structured to transmit cultural imperatives to future generations. Practically every culture in the world has their own version of the 'word of god' - their own categorical imperatives that are transmitted from one generation to the next through storytelling, dances, symbolic representations, etc. But the nature of what is being enquired into does not exempt those things from scientific reasoning. This is not to say that science can/must be ham-fisted about its questions and enquiries towards senstive subjects, which usually defeats the research, I am only saying that if the questions are framed properly, the method can be used. And it can be used fairly successfully, even if only to make a start. Do you agree?

Ok, so a little more information to gather that is not expressed in the story - at least from a scientific point of view. Maize is a very interesting crop that was domesticated some 8500 years ago in Mesoamerica. It requires human intervention to propogate. It lacks amino acids lysine and tryptophan and vitamin B3 (niacin). On it's own it is not a very nutritious food. The common bean was domesticated some 6000 years ago or more in Mesoamerica and south from wild bean plants. Beans contain a measure of lysine, tryptophan & niacin. Squash has been cultivated for over 8000 years in Mesoamerica, but likely was also eaten in other parts of the world. Squash contains B vitamins, tryptophan and is a good source of carbohydrates. Eaten together, these foods can provide a balanced and nutritious diet. What we are interested in however, is the presence of the Three Sisters in Iroquoia. The current archaeological record as supplied by the recent work of Dr. John Hart from the New York State Museum the provides a bit of a twist to the story of the Three Sisters. The archaeological record point to squash as being the earliest of the Three Sisters to make an appearance in Iroquoia, likely cultivated some 3 thousand years ago. Recent dating - using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating techniques) of cooking residues from ancient pot sherds shows that maize appeared about the 2 thousand years ago. However, the earliest confirmed dating of the common bean in Iroquoia dates to only about 700 years ago. Now accepting that the Three Sisters refers to Maize, Squash and the Common Bean, the earliest this story could have come together in the present form is about 700 years ago, a few centuries before Europeans arrived in the 'New World.' Within going into detail, some interesting things were going on in the vicinity of Iroquoia 700 or so years ago. They might be related? Let's ask: So the question is, what is the origin of the Three Sisters as it relates to the story, the concept of intercropping and the use of those particular three crops? I propose that the 'Three Sisters' story is part of a compendium of stories that form an agrarian cultural imperative that was passed along as the knowledge of agriculture spread from one culture to another. There are a few ways to test this hypothesis: 1. Linguistics or archaeo-linguistics that could trace the formation of keywords (i.e the words for maize, beans & squash) from ancient times to present within and without an Iroquoian language context. 2. Analysing the story of the Three Sisters within the context of other Iroquoian specific stories and myths and determining whether similar story structures exist. 3. Analysing similar agrarian story compendiums within other early Native American cultures esp those in the southern US. 4. Compiling a database on the dating of maize, beans and squash remains and organizing this data by region. 5. Analysing and comparing the DNA obtained from the remains in possible to trace minute changes in cultivars. 6. Other. So, do you follow so far?

So I have to ask August1991, what are the models of the macro-theorists made of? That is, where does the data come from for them to create their models?

I don't think there is anything wrong with your views, just in the way you express them. You could likely take your 5-ish examples and start separate threads if they don't already exist. The difficulty with your post is that it could result in long slice & dice replies that are sometimes tedious enough for some - me among them - to not spend any decent amount of time on them. To each their own of course, I am just saying... So I can only look at one point: I cannot separate people from society since societies are made up of people with a defined, mostly voluntary relationship. As per PR's Heinlein quote above, are you really saying that people are stupid? (sidenote: one of my favourite quotes is Hanlon's Razor which states, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.")

Very insightful cybercoma, however I would have to ask: does there need to be an expressed collaboration between the various components of the media for a bias to exist? That is, could there be a collective unconcious bias towards some subject keeping in mind that "the media" is made up of individuals in various capacities that decide what is 'news.' For instance, could there be a similar enough set of beliefs within the news editorial community - or a large portion thereof - that could result in homogeneous news reporting on a particular subject? You have already stated one - that they make decisions in the interests of their business - but are there be others? I would think that, if there were an unconcious collective bias, it would not be counterintuititve to their 'prime directive' (so to speak) of good business decisions.

I have and your argument is weak, unconvincing, lacks substance and is borderline. It appears to be based an a priori personal opinion and you have done very little else to expand it beyond that. If you choose to believe otherwise, it is a free country.

You might be on to something! Go on...

You have used a very limited dataset to draw a conclusion of a general social condition. You arbitrarily assign higher values to the properties of the data than is warranted. And you haven't even proven that the higher values are warranted, let alone real. If you offer a hypothesis, then as an un-biased observer, I would expect you to be first in line trying to disprove it. I have yet to see any of that type of critical honesty. First of all, why don't you present information that your hypothesis can't explain? Secondly, when presented with information that goes contrary to your hypothesis, you shift scope and arbitrarily assign limitations to that information to support your bias. Your "lots of examples" is a very small sample. Period. See my 'critical honesty' comment above. Now is this an example of you arguing for your point or against me? A perfect example of how you shift scope when your original scope becomes untenable. I didn't "introduce" Jews and homosexuals, you just arbitrarily assigned values to those properties and cited them as an exception because it went contrary to your position. So you have failed to convince me that there is any 'typical media anti-white bias' - whether we are talking about hate crimes, football or economics. But you have unerringly convinced me that you think there is. Not the same thing.

No one is expecting you to write a thesis, but at least back up your position with fact. You haven't done that. Just conjecture, speculation, opinion and wishful thinking. I thought you had access to some media studies or could correlate other studies into a coherent proposition, but all you have is a small selective sample that is subject to nothing more than your impressions of purpose. We learn more about kimmy's personal bias than anything to do with the media. Yes. That has become painfully clear.

Doesn't this apply to the Traditional Chinese Medicine special interest group as well seeing that they only had news reports on OMNI and in Chinese? If the TCM lobby were smart, don't you think they would make their case on CTV or CBC news in English? I have nothing to say about the merits of TCM, some of it is good, some of it isn't. But if you want something that is important to you, sooner or later you will have to address the issue in a language in which most people can understand.

Onward... OK, so we know that we can gather data not only from the elements, but from their structure or placement as well. In addition to the resolution of opposing elements we might be able to see other pertinent ancient Iroquoian cultural information such as gender politics (sisters versus ungendered farmer), power or family politics (the alliance of the sisters), farming methods (intercropping, site selection) and family oriented morals (good sisters, dependencies). I am sure a closer look at a more authentic version of this story might include more data. We can accept that an oral culture's 'books' are its myths and stories and that transmission of information for the moral, ethical and learning purposes would be encoded in these myths and stories. In this case, their appears to be more than meets the eye. U of Toledo prof Barbara Mann makes an interesting case in her analysis of 'A Lynx in Time' where she shows that Iroquoian people devised a construct whereby historical epochs are recorded within the allegorical construct of a single myth. This would make for very efficient means of communication. The Three Sisters story seems to be constructed in this way - an allegorical construct for many levels of cultural information. So far we have looked at the data contained in the story itself. Now I would like to look at the story from the perspective of the biology of the plants and anthropology through the recent work of Dr. Hart from the New York State Museum. Once I have done this, then I would like to offer a hypothesis about this and similar stories and offer possible avenues to test the hypothesis.

What, and kill Walmart? What are you - some kind of pinko lefty??

Unless Tiger appears on Oprah. I heard a news report yesterday on 680 that someone recommended that Tiger appear on Oprah and appear contrite. Can't wait. Maybe he'll get religion on TV. That would be cool.

Not really. All you have done is re-cite a very small sample as an indication of a general condition. That is called 'generalizing' and doesn't pass muster. In order for you to be convincing you need to demonstrate that you have done research both for and against your position and that your research indicates an overwhelming evidence for bias exists. You haven't done this. The only evidence I see here is that kimmy knows how to generalize and draw unfounded conclusions based on a small sample dataset ordered to support a generalist conclusion. Subsequently, you spent an inordinate amount of time trying to reframe my "counterexamples" to fit the progressively delimiting scope of your postion. When confronted with evidence contrary to your position you try to delimit the meaning of that evidence within a shrinking frame of positional reference. "identity politics" "localized" "non-identity" "playing dumb" These are all efforts to reframe the question favourable to your small evidence sample rather than enlargen your evidence to answer the question at hand. In addition you ignore other factors that contribute to the 'newsworthiness' of a particular event. This refers to the reductionist fallacy and, combined with the obviously small sample data, it is a titch dishonest. In that light, I would have to concur with c.r If you wish to discover media bias, read 'Manufactured Consent' by Herman and Chomsky. Their research is very thorough and very convincing. Also, take a look at the Jena Six story which has generated data about both side of the argument. The Jena Six story is a very fascinating take on the modern mass media in the US.

Now you are arguing against me instead of for your position. And the Duke lacrosse players were "non-identity?" LOFL! Gimme a break, you are missing a dimension of the story that made it more compelling than, say, the Donald R. Napierala case. So back we go to the story from Portland: http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=121355387311981300 "...highly publicized..." They say the story was highly publicized not me. If it doesn't pass your test of 'outside' local then perhaps that is more a function of your selectivity in which news you read than any media bias. And you still haven't convinced me that there is an anti-white bias.

That was the point of my response too. If you really, really, REALLY support GW then you should at least be willing to cut your lips off. Or worse. And I am sure more than a few can think of something worse to cut off. {gulp} I am sure there is a moral to all of this...

Well, I am not saying that I am happy to impose on others, at least I hope not. However, why not ask if people supporting the 10 billion would be happy to cut a body part off - a leg or an arm if you will. Or if they were willing to put their money where their mouth is, would they cut their lips off? That sort of thing.

Not "animals" in general, but deffo dogs and maybe house cats too as coevolutionary species. They maybe might not be right at the top in the same category, but we should at least take care of these beasties that we have brought along and selected all these 100 thousand years or so. It's only fair I think.