Tom,

Basically we're living in more and more of a fantasy world - the media is generating the fantasy based on corporate (and, indirectly, government) objectives and we ae just carrying out our parts as per the 'script'. It's now ALL marketing-driven, from real advertisements to the "news" stories that are produced for our consumption. Even real news events are 'spun' to put our focus where corps/gov want it to be.

I doubt that there's a single reliable only fact-based media outlet available to us in North America any more.

As an aside, look at what passes for 'news' in today's UT main page. There's an item about CPU makers putting anti-virus capabilities into chips and quoting the article extract "A buffer overflow essentially overwhelms a computer's defense systems and then inserts a malicious program in memory that the processor subsequently executes.". Obviously the author is satisfied with his/her definition of a "buffer overflow" and obviously the editor knows no better, so here we have it!

Jim

>The method of determination of “jobless in the United States” is an interesting topic. It is related to statistics – you can make anything look the way you wish with an appropriate presentation.
>
>A few facts from the latest report:
>
>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3916152/
>
>1. Unemployment = 5.7% - the lowest level in 14 months
>2. Only 1000 new jobs created for December with an expectation of 100,000 to 150,000 jobs
>3. 64,000 jobs were lost in December
>
>Now the basic question is how do we reduce unemployment by reducing the net number of jobs? Simple – you deduct the 300,000 people who no longer receive unemployment checks! They lost their benefits due to the length of time they were unemployed therefore, they no longer are “unemployed” according to the government!
>
>It is amazing how easy it is to solve a problem like unemployment. Try telling the people who no longer receive unemployment insurance checks they are no longer seeking employment or unemployed!
>
>With 2.3 million jobs lost since Bush took office, the Republicans want us to believe things are better than ever. There are people that believe that is true and some worked at Enron as executives. However, recently a few of these individuals have reason to be concerned. Reality takes many forms.