So we all agree:
 

What is O'Reilly's version of the story?

Cold Hard
 

Aha! I knew you thought I was a dummy. It is from reality tv. Oh, I kid. It's a book. John Irving. Main character is a little guy who talks funny and shouts things in capital letters all the time. I hear his voice (or what I suppose to be his voice, based on Irving's description) everytime the Spankster shouts at someone. Which, as you've seen, is quite frequently.

Cold Hard
 

how would that let me know how his voice sounds? This is so damn confusing.

So we all agree:
 

I don't think he talks about it if he can avoid it, but if I recall it is that Franken is an asshole for embarrassing him on tv and not telling him in advance (before they went on air) and allowing him to correct his earlier "mistake".

And, as you pointed out, there is now more to the spat, including the attempt by Fox to trademark "Fair and Balanced" before Franken's book came out and the "bad" photo of O'Reilly on the cover of said book.

I think this is related to politics
 

Spanky,

Do you remember in GG&S the reasons that Diamond gave for the failure of China to turn into a Europe and go out and conquer the world (beyond Asiatic island cultures)? I know it was not as close to the fertile crescent and I remember he argued that the conservative/closed/unitary nature of their society differed from the Europeans, but was there more to it than that? After all, they had the horizontal axis thing and all that going on.

Global Cooling?
 

• Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade.
  The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan.
  
  The pair, based in Irkutsk, at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, believe that global temperatures are driven more by changes in the sun's activity than by the emission of greenhouse gases. They say the Earth warms and cools in response to changes in the number and size of sunspots. Most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea, but as the sun is expected to enter a less active phase over the next few decades the Russian duo are confident they will see a drop in global temperatures.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/st...552092,00.html

I'm unqualifed to even make an educated guess on this, but Russian scientists are typically very solid.

Global Cooling?
 

Other than that whole Chernobyl thing. Ha! I kill me.

I think this is related to politics
 

The Emperor, after the Chinese Admiral Cheng Ho did that amazing tour of the Indian Ocean, ordered that no more Chinese were allowed to sail anywhere. I think he actually burned all the ships. The Manchu dynasty that followed in (I think) 1644 followed the same policy. China turned into itself thinking they could learn nothing from barbarians. That explains Chinas problem but not the Mughul Empire in India, the Safavids in Persia and the Ottomans. Jared also argued that because Europe was divided into many countries there was competition and this competition spurred them to innovate weaponry and shipbuilding - the key to dominating the world. The other four Empires; the Ottomans, the Safavids, the Moguls and the Manchu’s were all complacent and rested on their laurels. I thought this was one of Jared’s weakest and least supported arguments in the book because the Empires had to compete with each other. But whatever.

So we all agree:
 

I need to watch more TV. I just miss everything. I can't watch the Talk Shows anymore because I have no idea who all these people are. Is it just me or do the news shows like fox have more commercials than everyone else.

Books and DVDs don't have commercials but they turn you into a pop culture ignoramus.

So we all agree:
 

That he won a Peabody. Keep up.

So we all agree:
 

I can't watch the political shows because they all seem to me to be talking heads with their memorized talking points and I have no idea as to commercial content on Foxnews or CNN these days. Most of the tv I watch falls into two categories - mindless fluff tv (E! is a favorite for this) or history channel/biography type shows. Tivo is a great invention because it allows you to skip commercials, so I don't get exposed to many of those anymore. I do watch The Daily Show almost nightly and I (like a lot of America) get a lot of my political information from that show. This is what Slave would say is wrong with our country. The good news is that it includes real news (as filtered through Jon Stewart's wacky brain) and if something interests me, I can investigate it further to find out what really happened. I also listen to NPR in the car some, though lately I've started listening to books on CD in the car instead (I'm currently learning about the eruption of Krakatoa that killed 40,000 people in the 1880s, however the book is a bit tedious in presentation).

Actually, scary as it may sound, discussions on this site also tend to keep me more in the loop of current events than I would otherwise be. And, of course, NFH's helpful links to cnn.com news stories.

So we all agree:
 

What, no Rescue Me or Nip/Tuck? You are missing out!

I get my news online almost completely.

So we all agree:
 

It is watching the E Channel that saves you from the fate I am experiencing. My twenty something employees make me feel like I live in a different country. I think I have gotten so far behind I will just never catch up.

So we all agree:
 

Oh, no, you can catch up, if you want to. At least to a certain point. It's sort of disturbing not just to "know" everything that is the deal anymore. I could just swear I was 20 yesterday.

So we all agree:
 

I don't watch much TV -- I get my pop culture from the FB.