From the Dept. of I Think There's More To The Story:
An English radio station said it has banned songs by British crooner James Blunt from its airwaves after listeners said they were fed up with hearing "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover".
Chris Cotton, programme controller of local radio Essex FM in southern England, said: "We don't have anything against James Blunt and we're pleased he has been so successful, but we really need a break."
The music industry exerts a lot of pressure on radio stations to play certain artists' music over and over again, Cotton said. "Often this can be out of step with the audience's tastes, which results in songs being overplayed," he said. "We're happy to stand up to this pressure and follow the strong message listeners have given us. We encourage other radio stations to take the same step."
Despite this minor setback, Blunt has enjoyed phenomenal success since his voice first emanated from radio stations across the world last year. "You're Beautiful" topped the charts in 25 countries.
In March, the former army officer became the first British artist to reach the number one slot in the US Billboard chart in nine years.
So the e-e-evil record companies are forcing you to play his music you say? And you're Taking a Stand and Speaking Truth to Power you say? And the artist is a former army oficer you say? Hmmm.
#4
Dunno if the radio station has an agenda, but I could do without hearing that dorky "you're beautiful" song again.
I turn the radio OFF when it comes on now, and have been doing so for a while. (Not just for that song, either.) More often than not, I then don't turn it back on. That's hard for the station to sell to their sponsors.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/29/2006 15:49 Comments ||
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#5
I dunno if it's an army thing, but that song has been played to death over here. Really, really played - and I hardly ever listen to the radio.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
05/29/2006 19:37 Comments ||
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Former Vice President Al Gore's new global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," warns in emphatic terms that the world is facing a "planetary emergency" unless America curbs its penchant for fossil fuel pollution.
Despite widespread coverage of Gore's cinematic debut, however, the press has declined to mention a few inconvenient truths about the ex-veep's own environmental record.
One of the most glaring tidbits, for instance, is the pollution Gore and his family caused by maintaining their own toxic waste dump on their farm in Carthage, Tennessee. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Nashville's CBS network affiliate WTVF broadcast video of the Gore dump after the then-vice presidential candidate denied the story was true. The film featured aerial shots of the debris, and included close-ups of dripping oil filters, toxic aerosol spray cans, unrecycled aluminum pesticide containers, used tires and all manner of environmentally unfriendly refuse.
"It wasn't a pristine environmental haven, it was an ugly, dangerous dump -- and it could have leached into the [nearby] Caney Fork River," one Gore critic complained at the time.
During Gore's 2000 presidential bid, the Fox News Channel unearthed and re-aired the dump clip, but the mainstream press otherwise ignored the startling news that the nation's leading environmentalist was himself a Class A polluter. According to EPA regulations cited by the Washington Times, the pesticide dumping alone could have netted Gore over $25,000 in fines. Despite the smoking gun video of Gore's environmental violations, there's no record he was ever penalized for his pollution.
#1
Perhaps FOX should re-present it. This time pin it on an unnamed Republican and after the Environazi's and MSM get into full tizzy mode do a 'Oh sorry - that was Al Gore not a repubician. My bad.'.
Then the public can watch the MSM and Co switch from full tizzy to full coverup mode.
Army Spc. Michael Hilliard would like to get back to his unit in Iraq. But he can't right now, because in April a bullet tore through his helmet and rattled his brain. So before he can return to a life in Baghdad of searching houses, arresting insurgents and shooting at the enemy, he first needs to arrange the picture cards laid before him to show the proper sequence for making spaghetti.
"This is hard. It's frustrating," he said. "I know they are doing what they need to do but I just want to get back with my guys."
On April 7, Hilliard, 21, was walking through a farm field with his unit when he says three men started firing at them from a car.
"Next thing I know, I fell to the ground," Hilliard said during a therapy session at the Carl T. Hayden Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Phoenix. "My buddies said I yelled for a medic and went down." When he regained consciousness, a medic was holding a bandage to his head. Hilliard was then flown by helicopter to an Army hospital in north Baghdad.
"I called my mom from the ER. I asked her how her day was. She said, 'It's the middle of the night, I'm sleeping.' I told her I got shot in the head and she told me to stop joking. She said that wasn't funny."
His mother was right. Hilliard thought he was fine, but his injuries were serious. The bullet crashed into his head just above the left temple and fractured his skull. Hilliard's speech, memory and attention span had stopped working right when the bullet slammed into his head.
After initial treatment in Washington he was sent to Phoenix where he could receive speech, language and cognitive therapy at the VA Medical Center and stay with his family. For three weeks, he worked with speech pathologists Angela Garcia and Karen Pearson. The work was tedious but important. Hilliard was injured in a part of the brain responsible for things like planning, communicating, and making judgments. Hilliard was lucky; he just needed to start exercising those parts of his brain again. Although Hilliard resisted the therapy at the beginning, he did begin to realize he needed help.
"I was forgetting things. I would say the same thing over and over and not realize it," he said. "It wasn't drastic, but it was definitely real."
He also realized that if he wanted to get back to being a soldier, he had to make his head right. The work was more tedious than difficult. He would perform simple tasks that tested his memory and organizational skills: playing word games, arranging picture cards, memory tests. Garcia began to make the tests more difficult, and then she started to distract him while he performed his tasks. Steadily, all of his cognitive functions began to return. While the ability to make quick judgments, remember things and communicate is obviously important for everybody, they can be a matter of life and death in battle. That's why Hilliard has been dogged in his work, even when it felt silly.
This week, Hilliard is back at Walter Reed where he is receiving comprehensive tests so he can be certified to be physically and mentally fit to return to active duty. If that happens, he will go to a base in Kentucky and rejoin his unit, which will rotate out of Iraq and back to the United States in the fall. Hilliard re-enlisted since his injury and wants to make a career in the service. On Friday, he received his Purple Heart and his sole focus now is to return to battle and prove, to others and himself, that he is well enough to serve again with his unit.
#1
My aunt (high school business teacher) used to pay me a dollar to grade her business math papers (using the same key she used) - more to keep me busy and out of my mother's hair than anything else. (Yes, I know she checked behind me - at least until she was sure she could trust my work. I knew it then, too, though I never told her.)
Somehow I don't think this is quite the same thing....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/29/2006 17:00 Comments ||
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#2
Many English teachers in the region teach five classes a day with 30 students each. If they assign a two-page essay in every class, that adds up to 300 pages to read, edit, comment on and grade.
And if that same teacher taught in the university system, he/she would have 3 assistant instructors, work less hours, be paid probably twice as much. Somehow the whole system is backward. Its the primary and secondary levels that should get the emphasis. Instead most state systems rob the foundation of citizen education to velvet line academia.
#3
And if that same teacher taught in the university system, he/she would have 3 assistant instructors, work less hours, be paid probably twice as much.
And have earned a PhD and competed for the limited number of faculty slots. ;-)
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Former Vice President Al Gore's new global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," warns in emphatic terms that the world is facing a "planetary emergency" unless America curbs its penchant for fossil fuel pollution.
