The more I read about the caravan the more I suspect that it isn't really much of a story and is veering towards Wag the Dog territory. Seven (or ten or fifteen) thousand refugees sounds like an awful lot of people but if you compare it to the hundreds of millions legal border crossings each year it becomes a more like a rounding error. The authorities seem to have the situation well in hand in Tijuana; some guys have been climbing the fence and when border agents approach them they scoot back to the Mexican side. I'm not going to say the caravan has become a circus but some of those refugees seem to be having too much fun but I could be wrong. When this is all over a small percentage of refugees will be admitted, after lengthy processing, and Mexico will be stuck with everyone else.
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The brevity of Mr. Beagles' latest post was unexpected but I'm not disturbed by it. There is such a thing as beating a dead horse and some of the recent discussions have gone nowhere, except in circles, in my opinion. Maybe it's just a matter of style; Mr. Beagles expresses an opinion and leaves it at that without beating you over the head.
His perception of Al Jazeera, for instance; it seems to me that he is not that familiar with their content. Although their point view is pro-Arab it does not mean that they are anti-US and their reporting is surprisingly objective, all things considered. Based in Qatar, Al Jazeera has a lot of enemies in the Mid-Eastern community, particularly the Saudis. I don't buy everything Al Jazeera reports but a different point of view doesn't hurt. A recent video I saw included that slain reporter, Khashoggi, and it was chilling to hear him express fear for his life.
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Since I don't normally buy a daily paper I didn't pay much attention to Uncle Ken's comments about the comics pages but then I saw it for myself, and Wow! It's like the paper has been gutted. The fact that they spread some of the comics in the classified ad section tells me that they are trying to beef up the number of ad pages, a long time source of revenue for all newspapers, to make it seem larger than it actually is. The Chicago Sun-Times could already be dead but doesn't know it yet, another victim of the Internet Age. The loss of print media is a terrible price to pay for the immediate gratification of online news and information. I wonder how well we will adapt, or if we will be able to.
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Have either of you guys listened to any audio books, the newfangled method of reading without reading? As an avid reader I've long dismissed them, but then I stumbled across a ten-hour reading of Orwell's 1984 and I am impressed. The aural version adds a depth I did not expect and in some ways is superior to the written word, giving my mind's eye a significant boost and is a different form of engagement. I'll have to do some research on this, to see if there are comparisons between the written and the aural regarding comprehension and retention of information. Any guesses on how they measure up?
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